Partition Managers
Partitioning your hard drive is like putting up a digital fence, splitting your hard drive into distinct sections, each for a specific purpose. It allows you to install multiple operating systems, or just keep different types of data in their own little containers. Here's the scoop on partition managers...
What is a Partition Manager?
So how can you create, resize, and manage partitions on your hard drive? With a partition manager of course. But before you start carving up your hard drive, see my companion article Partitioning Your Hard Drive for my philosophy on partitioning. There are also some dissenting views in the reader comments, so take it all in before you decide.
Some partition management tools are built into Windows, but they can’t do everything. Commercial partition managers cost a lot and are not used much. Then there are free partition managers that do just about everything you could wish.
Free Partition Managers
Windows XP comes with the Disk Management utility, which you can access by entering diskmgmt.msc in the Start>Run box. You can format a drive partition; label it; rename it; create it if there is unallocated space on the physical drive; or delete it. That’s about all. The disk partitioning tools that come with Vista and Windows 7 go a little bit further. You can shrink a partition to make unallocated space for another new partition, but you can't enlarge an existing partition or merge it with another partition.
Among third-party free partition managers, the Home Edition of EASUS Partition Manager is a favorite. You can create, delete, and restore partitions. You can expand, resize, and move partitions from one physical part of a drive to another. You can copy an entire disk or a partition easily to back up all your data. It supports drives of up to 2TB. The free Home Edition does not support Windows Server operating systems or 64-bit Windows; those are found mainly in business environments..
PartitionWizard is also free for non-commercial use. It does support 64-bit as well as 32-bit operating systems, including Windows XP, Vista, Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 and Windows 7. Basically, it’s a clone of Partition Magic; it looks very similar and does Move/Resize Partition, Copy Partition, Create Partition, Delete Partition, Format Partition, Convert File System, Hide/Unhide Partition, Explore Partition, Partition Recovery and much more.
Commercial Partition Managers
Partition Magic by Symantec is a $70 program you may only need once. It lets you create, resize, merge, and manage partitions. It will automatically create a dual-boot boot record for you if you wish to run two operating systems and choose one at startup.
Acronis Disk Director has many bells and whistles in addition to partition management. It features a boot record manager, like PartitionMagic. It also sports a disk sector editor which will keep geeks entertained for days and render the hard drives of beginner or intermediate users completely inoperable. It can recover partitions that you accidentally deleted. It sells for $50. It is designed to work best with other costly Acronis software, such as True Image for disk imaging and scheduled backups of selected data.
If you have just one or two computers, you probably won’t need a partition manager more than once a year, or even just once, period. It makes little sense to buy a commercial partition manager unless you manage large numbers of computers in a corporate environment. Free partition managers are just as capable, user-friendly, and reliable as their commercial counterparts. They are fine for most of us.
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Posted by Bob Rankin on August 26, 2009 09:49 PM
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Article information: AskBobRankin -- Partition Managers (Posted: August 26, 2009 09:49 PM)
Source: http://askbobrankin.com/partition_managers.html
Copyright © 2005 - Bob Rankin - All Rights Reserved
Most recent comments on "Partition Managers"
Posted by:
JeffFoldem
27 Aug 2009
Very good overview, Bob. I enjoy your style and your "use free if possible" stance.
Unfortunately, one thing people may need even more than a good Partition Manager tool is a good Partition Recovery tool. I've heard there are free ones out there, and was wondering if you had any experience with any, had any user feedback, or could recommend any.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, check out TESTDISK, which I mentioned here: http://askbobrankin.com/hard_drive_recovery.html
Posted by:
Snert
28 Aug 2009
Q: Can you partition an existing C: without losing data and such - on the fly?. I like to divide my HD in half with D: for the unecessary fun stuff - games. toys and such foolishness and save C: for the workng parts.
Posted by:
victor emmanuel
28 Aug 2009
Thanks a lot Bob. Your articles are always dazzling and impressive even to IT geeks ! Please keep it up. I have an HDD that got crashed along with the OS, WIndows XP HOME, is there a way I can get the data recovered because i can hardly access the partition even as a secondary drive on another OS. What can I do ? Also, are there utilities that can mark bad sectors on a disk so that data won't be placed on those spots? Thanks.
EDITOR'S NOTE: In the Hard Drives section on this site, you'll find a few articles about data recovery. As for bad sectors, they will be marked and blocked when you reformat the disk.
Posted by:
DW
28 Aug 2009
"You missed something VERY important!" Open Source Software is the "Best Bang for the Buck!" I have found out that g-parted which you can purchase for approximately $1.99 at a Linux CD software store on the web does the very same thing as these "very expensive software CD that you purchase at computer and office retail stores! Web sites such as OSDisc.com, pctech101, and linuxcd.org offer Linux open source software! Also, for those people who would like to be able to un-install their OS without the big big $ tag at retail stores......try d-base which is found on either Linux System Rescue Disc or Trinity Rescue Disc! Three Cheers for Open Source Software! The ONLY difference between Open Source Software and retail software is the total amount of money you have to keep throwing down into the toilet bowl! Microsoft based software is like the bottomless pit! No end in sight! Open Source Software......Lots of money saved!
Posted by:
Zeke Krahlin
29 Aug 2009
@DW:
Hooray for Linux, eh? Actually, you can download and install gparted for free. The $1.99 is simply payment for the convenience of someone else putting it on a CD for you. Actually, you can also download/install a Linux Live CD, such as Knoppix...all for free. Which includes a partition editor as well as other useful recovery tools...and everything else that comes with a standard Linux operating system.
Posted by:
Barry Leaver
30 Aug 2009
Much thanks Bob, for answering my question on Partitioning of my hard drive it was very help and at least I know that I don't have to go out and buy and expensive program that does just as much as the free one.
I get it for free and I will proberly only use it once or twice on the life time of the drive.
Thanks again
Posted by:
fishplate
09 Sep 2009
Concerning Vista, you said "You can shrink a partition to make unallocated space for another new partition, but you can enlarge an existing partition or merge it with another partition." Looks like you might have meant "can't" in one of those...
EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks for spotting the typo - fixed now.
Posted by:
Racecar56
12 Sep 2009
How could you forget GParted? :D